Month: November 2019

This past Sunday (24 November 2019), undergraduates at UCSC convened for the fourth annual Symposium on Undergraduate Research at UCSC (SURU), an event organized by undergraduates for undergraduates to share their research. The symposium featured the hard work of many UCSC linguists.

Recent graduate Paula Ledesma (BA, 2019) presented a poster entitled “Clitic placement and clitic climbing in Spanish.” This project was her thesis under the supervision of our own Jorge Hankamer. Sonia Dominguez, a Linguistics and Cognitive Science double major, presented a poster entitled “Social media plasticity” (joint work with Adriana Manago and UC Berkeley’s Lucia Magis Weinberg and Ron E. Dahl), where she and her team examine the attitudes and beliefs of social media and technology use in Peruvian adolescent students.

Ph.D. student Jed Pizarro-Guevara was also in attendance as one of the judges. “It’s a very beautiful thing to see undergrads presenting their research. I was definitely very happy to see our Linguistics students there. Paula and Sonia, so proud of you two! I hope that in the future, we see more and more Linguistics undergrads present their research at SURU!” Jed adds, “Equally as beautiful was seeing undergrads run this event. Major props to Ashley and the rest of the SURU-organizers!” Ashley Ippolito is a first year intending to double major in Linguistics and Cognitive Science and is a s/lab-regular.

Ph.D. students Stephanie Rich and Jack Duff served as SURU abstract reviewers.

Congratulations on another successful symposium, and thanks to all the linguists involved!

Last weekend I traveled from Princeton to Tarrytown, on the Hudson, for the 6th yearly retreat-cum-workshop of philosophers and linguists, known as PhLiP.  PhLiP was started by two philosophers of language, Delia Graff and Karen Lewis.  It is now organized by UCSC alum Chris Kennedy (PhD, 1997), and Karen.  Alum Chris Barker (PhD, 1991) was there too.  This is a great event that provides philosophers of language and semanticists opportunities for conversation at breakfast, lunch and dinner, not to speak of the hour long Q&A after every talk.  At the workshop I presented joint work with former UCSC visitor Michela Ippolito (U of Toronto) on the presumptive future in Italian.

Junko Ito and Armin Mester presented a colloquium on syntax-prosody matters at UAB (Universitat Autònoma Barcelona), and went on to give a keynote address at RecPhon2019, also at UAB. This workshop dealt with recursivity in phonology above and below the word. It was great to connect with a whole group of former LRC visitors: Emily Elfner (York University), Violeta Martínez-Patricio (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), and Gorka Elordieta (University of the Basque Country).

(from left) Emily Elfner, Violeta Martínez-Patricio, Armin Mester, Gorka Elordieta, and Junko Ito at RecPhon2019.

After the workshop, it was a special pleasure to spend an afternoon in the Old City with alumna Louise McNally, now a professor at Pompeu Fabre University (pictured below dining at La mar Salada in the Barceloneta).

(from left) Louise McNally, Armin, and Junko dining in Barcelona.

s/lab: Tuesday, 3:00-4:00 PM, The Cave (Stev Lib 102): In preparation for Dave Kush’s upcoming colloquium (on 12/6), Lalitha Balachandran will lead discussion of Kush, Lohndal, and Sprouse (2018), “Investigating variation in island effects:
A case study of Norwegian wh-extraction.”

SPLAP, Phlunch, S-Circle/WLMA, and MRG will not meet this week.

On the weekend of November 9th, graduate students Lisa Hofmann and Jack Duff took part in the twelfth annual meeting of California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics (CUSP) at the University of Southern California, organized by recent UCSC alumnus Deniz Rudin (USC). The weekend was filled with interesting talks and helpful comments.

Lisa presented a talk on Sunday morning titled “The anaphoric potential of indefinites under negation and disjunction.”

Jack also presented a talk on Sunday morning, titled “To flip a judge: Predicates of personal taste in a commitment-based discourse model.”

Lisa Hofmann presenting her talk at CUSP on Nov. 10.

Some of the researchers presenting research at CUSP 12. Fourth and fifth from left are UCSC students Jack Duff and Lisa Hofmann. (Photo: Deniz Rudin)

This past Saturday, volunteers from Nido de Lenguas, a partnership between UCSC Linguistics and Senderos, hosted an event at the Watsonville Public Library. Participants learned about San Martín Peras Mixtec, a language of Oaxaca also widely spoken in Santa Cruz County. Activities included rehearsing sample dialogues, and a “Game of Tones,” in which participants were introduced to the tonal system of San Martín Peras Mixtec, and practiced distinguishing different tonal patterns on simple vocabulary.

Thanks to all who made this event possible, and especially Maestra Natalia Gracida Cruz!

Maestra Natalia teaches a lesson on conversational phrases in San Martín Peras Mixtec at the Watsonville Public Library.

Congratulations to graduate student Margaret Kroll, whose paper “Polarity reversals under sluicing” has appeared in Semantics and Pragmatics!